Poaching was intensifies between Tesla and Apple

Tesla Motors is one of the hottest companies in the automotive and technology world, apparently this stature has swayed hundreds of Apple employees to Tesla over the past few years, leading to a growing battle between the two giants.

Even though Apple and Tesla do not compete on products—Apple focused on phones and computers while Tesla is focused on electric cars—the two seemingly have a taste for the same engineers.

Tesla is reportedly winning the poaching battle as well, even CEO Elon Musk claims Apple has old won over a small portion of the company's top engineers.

There are reasons for both wanting to switch, in Tesla's case Musk represents a figurehead for change in the industry, similar to the previous CEO of Apple Steve Jobs.

In Apple's case, the company is offering a $250,000 (£163,000) signing on bonus and 60 per cent salary increase, quite hefty incentives alongside being able to work at the most expensive company in the world.

Engineers seem to be pulled more by the company rather than the incentive package, at least in most cases. Google recently had an employment dump following various engineers moving away from Mountain View to more progressive startups.

Elon Musk is winning big at SpaceX too—his space firm working on missions to Mars and self-sustaining rockets. Several engineers and scientists from NASA, Google, Boeing and Virgin Galactic have moved over to SpaceX in the past few years.

Google's CEO Larry Page even said he would rather give all of his billions of dollars to Elon Musk, rather than give it all to charities like other billionaire philanthropists. Page claims Musk would be able to do more with the money than these non-profit charities.